Business valuation expert John Warrillow explains the benefits of making your business more valuable as an acquisition target, even if you have no intention of selling it.

Talking Points

• The two most common reasons business owners consider selling their business
• Why it makes sense to build your business to sell even if you don't want to sell
• The difference between growing value and growing revenue
• Why productizing makes it easier to charge upfront for services

Quotable Quotes

• "I see a lot of freelancers 'start a company', but they really just created a job."—JW
• "There's a difference between 'specialization' and 'productization'."—JW
• "Focus on a very small niche and become dominant in that space."—JW
• "People say 'Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity,' but neither is the value of your company."—JW
• "If you're just a hodgepodge of a bunch of undifferentiated services, an acquirer could easily go after your revenue without buying you."—JW
• "The very same things that make your business valuable and sellable, are also the things that will make your business fun to run forever."—JW
• "Can the business succeed without you?"—JW
• "Employees thrive on repetition."—JW
• "Every service offering you add grows the complexity of your business exponentially."—JW
• "Take a half-day and think about the one thing you do better than anybody else."—JW
• "Billing after services are rendered creates a 90-day negative cashflow cycle."—JW

Related Links

• Built to Sell (the book)
• Built to Sell (the podcast)
• Value Builder
• eMyth Revisited

John's Bio

John Warrilow is an entrepreneur, podcast host, and best-selling author with over 20 years of research experience into the small and medium business market. He has started and exited four companies, including a quantitative market research business that was acquired by the Corporate Executive Board in 2008. His best-selling book, Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You, was rewarded by both Fortune and Inc. Magazine as one of the best business books of 2011. He is also founder and host of the successful podcast, Built to Sell Radio.

Recently, John has founded The Value Builder System, which helps business owners and advisors assess the value of their company. With over 35,000 business owners and advisors having taken the Value Builder Questionnaire, this system has helped reassess and raise the company’s value by up to 71%.